Luminaires are known in a large variety of designs, being equipped with a number of light sources to illuminate a room and to create a pleasant atmosphere. Different kinds of light sources can be provided for different tasks. For example, a luminaire can comprise one or more directed light sources as a reading light and/or another light source to create an ambient light to illuminate the room. These different light sources of the luminaire can be controlled independently by corresponding control device.
In most cases the control devices for such luminaires provide a simple construction with on/off switches or dimming/boosting devices to change the light intensity of the different light sources. With an increasing number of light sources, the construction of the control device necessarily becomes more complex, making it more difficult to control the luminaire as desired, especially when additional parameters of the operational state of the light sources shall be controlled, like for example, color, hue and saturation. Incorporating a large variety of lighting functions into one luminaire, like the integration of various task lights and lights for atmosphere creation, almost necessarily goes along with increasing complexity of control. However, it is desired to control the direction of the task lights integrated into the luminaire easily. This is especially the case with LEDs as directed light sources, which offer a large variety of functions to change these light conditions.
On the other hand, user friendliness is an item of increasing importance in the consumer market. Especially in the senior market for elderly people, it is highly important to offer products which can be controlled easily in an intuitive way. The user interfaces for controlling such products should be based on a simple concept, even when a number of complex functions of the device in question is to be controlled. The known luminaires do not fulfill these requirements, since with an increasing number of light sources, possible lighting directions and operation parameters, the controllers become complicated to use.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a luminaire wherein a large number of functions can be controlled by means of a simple user interface, which enables an intuitive way of controlling lighting functions of the luminaire. Another object lies in the creation of a simple and intuitive control method for a luminaire of the described kind, especially for a luminaire comprising a variety of lighting functions for different purposes.